Chance Witness: An Outsider's Life in PoliticsMatthew ParrisRead by authorRunning time 4hrs (abridged)Penguin £8.99

Rather curiously, Parris has always loved the sensation of being sat on (which he blames on being strapped to the back of his African nurse), and prefers to focus on the stars rather than on a lover's eyes. He once told Margaret Thatcher (who always said there was 'something not quite right' about him) of his plan to travel to the Antarctic in search of the moon and the stars. 'Don't bother,' was her characteristic reply. 'You can see the moon and stars from Spalding.'

Parris has been a Clapham Common-cruising Tory MP, a marathon runner, failed Weekend World front man, and stinging parliamentary sketchwriter for the Times. His 'good heart and prosecuting intellect' - for which he wants to be remembered - does indeed permeate this intelligent autobiography. His assessments are shrewd: of many MPs as attention seekers with more ambition than talent, or of Blair, 'pleasant, bright with a nice silk tie', who delivers generalities with passion to conceal the howling void in his politics.

He's insightful - and harsh - with himself too: on his destructive compulsion to turn social occasions into performances; on his need, in Wilde's words, 'to feast with panthers'; in fact on his entire life, which he sees merely as a 'plod'.

Parris' overseas childhood homes included South Africa, Cyprus and Jamaica but he has maintained a faultless, rootless English accent entirely appropriate to this 'chance witness', the acute observer who is a part of the world he writes about, yet apart